American scientists measured the brain activity of two monkeys at the same time for the first time and found that social interaction may cause the monkeys to synchronize their brain activities. This "synchronization of thinking" may be an important part of the neural mechanisms behind primate social connections and social learning.
Brain activity is one of the key areas that humans are actively exploring. At present, most brain research methods mainly detect brain activity when a single object or a single object completes a cognitive task, but in fact the shape and function of the brain are normal. Now, scientists are beginning to explore the mechanism of multi-brain interaction.
This time, Duke University researcher Miguelicorelis and his colleagues recorded the brain activity of two monkeys at the same time. They found that the monkey's brain activity was synchronized when performing social tasks. In this social task, the monkey acts as a "passerby", sits in a computer-controlled wheelchair and heads to the food vending machine, and the other monkey acts as a "supervisor" to monitor. When arriving at the vending machine, the "passenger" gets a grape reward, and the observer gets a juice reward. Then, the two monkeys switched roles and recorded their brain activity while performing tasks. The recorded results showed that the cortical neurons of the "observer" monkeys reacted similarly to other monkeys. The research team noted that this phenomenon seems to depend on the distance between the two monkeys, the distance between the food and the wheelchair, and the speed of the wheelchair. Researchers believe that the synchronization of monkey brain activities may be an important part of the neural mechanism behind social behavior. But the researchers also pointed out that they only evaluated how experimental control factors (such as the distance between monkeys) affect brain synchronization. Expressions also play a role in brain synchronization.